Tracking down Shawn Lynch, a two-time winner of Creative Loafing‘s “Best Of” award for all-around musical excellence, is no easy task. If he’s not thrift-store shopping or working on his graphic-design career (the man loves creating flyers so much he’s been known to do it for free), Shawn is usually playing drums with area Queentastic indie rockers Poprocket. Or guitar with Les Dirt Clods. Or bass with the Hard Times Family. Or drums with longtime faves Lou Ford. Shawn’s a throwback to the late 60s/early 70s tradition of in-demand session musicians who play on everyone’s records (see: Jim Keltner, Aynsley Dunbar), although we’re aware this is Charlotte, not Nashville, New York, Memphis or El-Lay. Shawn doesn’t have what you’d call a trademark sound — unless you count “all of them.” Here’s five things he’s been diggin’ lately:
1. Spoon. “Their latest record Gimme Fiction, actually. I really can’t describe it, but it seems to speak to me.”
2. Homemade chili. “Always different, always awesome, especially when it’s cooked up by your sweetheart. I think the secret ingredients this time were the black beans.”
3. The Kinks. “Genius-type rock and roll. The Village Green Preservation Society is one of my top five albums of all time, but I’ve been listening to Arthur an awful lot lately. Apologies to P. Mehta.”
4. Air conditioning. “Being a fair skinned Irish-kinda boy, I was not made for these times. Gimme Autumn!”
4. Dungen. “I still don’t know where they hail from… Sweden? Holland? Their fuzzed-out psychedelia sung in JapaneseFrenchGerman has left me baffled. And entranced.”
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2005.
